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Monthly Archives: July 2013

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Our master plan is taking form, faster than we anticipated! My plan to create space and an open feeling includes 4 windows in the ceiling, we will take the ceiling up creating an amazing feature ceiling in the living area also as you walk up the stairs. Hard to explain, but pictures will come!

This one we didn’t do ourselves as it is very important that these windows are water tight.

There have been many questions and comments of whether I have been also contributing to the renovations or if I just watch Fredrik do all of the work with the video camera. I wish! I have been working my butt off. Fredrik’s Mum says ‘Amanda works like a man’… which I think is a compliment.

Well what an adventure it is to pick a new heating system in Sweden. It is a whole new world for me… I guess when you live in a polar climate it is pretty important but in many cases some of it does feel a little like overkill, but I guess the Swedes know just a wee bit more about heating than this Aussie!

Before even buying the house, the agent told us that changing the heating (värmepump) was the first thing to be done, which was kind of obvious when you saw the old system. It was oil heating (oljepanna), which consisted of two parts. The ‘panna’ which I guess is a furnace in English, basically the big mean green machine, (shown below). There was also the MASSIVE oil tank. Besides being downright scary looking, this is an incredibly inefficient way to heat your home in 2013, so changing was the only option for us.

The oljepanna: The oil tank:

Speaking of options… the world of options for heating systems (värmepump) was just utterly confusing. Basically we were tossing up between two options bergvärme (geo-thermal) and luft-vatten värmepump (which I have no idea what it is called in English, air-water heating pump is the direct translation). Anyway, the bergvärme is a really efficient way of heating your home and many will argue that it is the most efficient, this was my preference when going in to this as I had heard everywhere that it is the best option. The more we looked in to it, we found that the difference really was marginal. The cost of the bergvärme was significantly more, and the yearly running costs were marginally less. The calculation is around 20 years that you will break-even.

Aside from cost, to install a bergvärme just seems like a lot of work to me. And also the costs can increase if they need to drill more than they realise, which they don’t know until they start. Also they need to choose the right place to drill a whopping hole in your garden and our block of land is hardly ideal for getting a machine which weighs a few tonnes up around the back of the house. It felt like it would be almost impossible.

So in the end, with much advice from Energipojkarna we decided to spend our 96,000 SEK (around AUD16,000) on a luft-vatten pump. Not in this price was new elements (not essential), but included was the cost of removing all of the old equipment and an additional large water tank so I can enjoy my looooong showers. This is interesting to consider doing at installation, although it may add around 6000SEK, if you decide to do it later it will be around 20,000SEK and the installation will be different and it will use more electricity (so I am told).

The installation started with the removal of the old system and oil tank, then we had a delayed arrival of our värmepump and delivery couriers who left it sitting on the side of the road, literally, 50,000SEK worth of equipment which weighed around 300kgs combined, just left on the side of the road. Arrrgh… don’t even get me started. But then the guys from NR Kyl came, helped us get all of the stuff up to the house and began the installation.

I have to say, the guys from NR Kyl have been amazing. Incredibly efficient, helpful, quick, friendly and have in 2 days finished the installation, which is more than I would have expected on these beautiful Summer Days in Sweden! They have been great from the beginning and we have been really happy with the service and results. And here, where the scary old oljepanna sat, is a fresh, new and efficient heating system!!

To finish the job we decided to replace the existing delightful yellow elements with new elements (which are also not cheap), so NR Kyl will be back on Monday to do this for us. We are only changing the elements upstairs at this stage as we wont renovate downstairs just yet, and in the future we will have floor heating downstairs. Which I also wanted upstairs but apparently was not a good option, so I lost on that one! 🙂 You win some, you lose some!

It has been a busy week… absolutely exhausting. I will add more posts with the other things we have accomplished later but first, the big one… the bathroom!

We have had some help from Fredrik’s Dad and that man is a working machine!! It has been so good to have him here and he really likes to do things right, a bit of a perfectionist, which makes me feel secure that everything is being done to the highest standard. This bathroom is our small bathroom upstairs which we will use until we start working on our big lux bathroom downstairs.

It is a really small room and we are just going to keep it basic. The trick to making a small bathroom feel bigger? Use large tiles and make sure that the grout closely matches the tile colour… the less lines the more open, it will give the illusion of more space. So I have chosen large floor tiles in grey colour, they are 600mm x 300mm and big white wall tiles which are 550mm x 300mm, plus a feature if white mosiac tiles in the shower. We will have basic white furniture. Finished photos to come in some weeks, after Fredrik’s Dad comes back to help finish up! 🙂

The mosaic:

Wall and floor tiles:

All pipes were from 1959 so it was important to find and replace them all. So we did that and then have laid the floor. Next steps are floor heating, walls spackle, tiles, then connection of plumbing and furniture.

Finally, the wall is all down. In just 1 hour today we turned two bedrooms and a living area in to an open plan space which will be the new kitchen and living area. It feels massive now, super excited that the master plan is starting to become a reality. I can’t wait until we raise the ceiling and put in the ceiling windows… it is going to look amazing!

Here is a video of our demolition, you can see the before, during and after. 1 hour of work in 2 minutes…

Today we were busy little bees! We had some helpers from Västervik in the form of Fredrik’s Mum and Brother. The extra muscle definitely made a difference today, the wall is only about half way down and OMG does one wall result in a LOT of wheelbarrows full of rubble! I started off by cleaning out the room where the heating pump is currently located as tomorrow the removal of this pretty thing in the pic below is happening. Is it only me or does this look like something from a horror film?

Otherwise… this is pretty much what happened today summed up in to a 10 second film:

Now that our holidays have started it is time to really get cracking. We move in to the house in 3 weeks, so we need to make the inside a little bit more livable. We have prioritised one room downstairs which will be our temporary bedroom so we have done a quick paint job and thrown in some cheap floorboards. All experienced renovators tell us a fresh bedroom is REALLY important, so we have listened.

Sometimes it feels overwhelming, but we just need to keep focused and take it one step at a time.

Check out the photos of our progress:

The temporary bedroom:

Before:

Is Fredrik renovating or Breaking Bad with Heisenberg?

It is a bit hot in plastic overalls:

Filling up the holes:

A coat of paint:Floorboards in:

Just some skirting boards left and we can sleep in here… oh… and a new light!!

Some other happenings on the constructions site have included:

Deliveries galore from Beijer:

A much anticipated bin, the amount of rubbish is just ridiculous!

Fredrik aka McGyver decided to make it easier to get stuff in the bin so instead of walking down the stairs, he constructed this little platform for us to throw the rubbish from. The boy is a genius.